In 2004, the University of Minnesota published a youth related injury report that included the following information.
Sports participation is on the rise for children and adolescents in the United States. Each year, more than 20 million American youth participate in school or community sports (Damore). This results in approximately one million serious sports-related injuries occurring annually, requiring hospitalization, surgery, missed school, or at least a half-day in bed (School Health Guidelines to Prevent Unintentional Injuries and Violence). The social, as well as economic consequences related to sports injury incidents are quite substantial, and are estimated to cost thousands of millions of dollars in the U.S. each year (Kelm).

• In a recent study, sports-related injuries accounted for 41 percent of musculoskeletal injury treated in emergency rooms in 5 to 21 year olds (Damore). As shown in Table 1, basketball accounts for the most sports-related injuries, followed by football, and then baseball and softball.